Last and First Ascents

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Messages 21 - 40 of total 76 in this topic << First  |  < Previous  |  Show All  |  Next >  |  Last >>
Kevster

Trad climber
Evergreen, CO
Jun 2, 2006 - 02:19pm PT
Watched the chockstone fall off Easter Island, about 30 minutes after a party had finished rapelling. Was getting a rack together to climb all the towers that day but decided to go cragging instead.

Oh yea, the wierd thing is that is was on Easter Sunday......
hollyclimber

Big Wall climber
Seattle, Wa
Jun 2, 2006 - 04:36pm PT
Have been wondering for a couple of years now if Stoners Highway still exists after the massive rockfall that doused it two Mays ago. Ivo and I climbed it the day before it got toasted. I would be surprised if the route is still climbable.

hgb
Patrick Sawyer

climber
Originally California now Ireland
Jun 2, 2006 - 05:05pm PT
Darn Hollyclimber, I hope you are wrong, I have always wanted to do Stoners Highway.

Apparently, as global warming takes hold (please no debate, it's happening regardless of the cause) a number of routes in the Alps are disintegrating because the 'permafrost' that glued the rock together is melting. Also in equatorial Africa. snows of Kilimanjaro? Not for much longer apparently. The Diamond Couloir on Mt Kenya? Iffy at best as I understand it. Darn, I always wanted to do that route.
Melissa

Gym climber
berkeley, ca
Jun 2, 2006 - 06:05pm PT
I've talked to a couple of parties who climbed Stoner's last year...no word of any changes. Kor Beck was altered.
Fluoride

Trad climber
on a rock or mountain out west
Jun 2, 2006 - 07:29pm PT
Holly, Stoner's is still in tact. One of my partners went up and did it a couple months after that rockfall on MC and didn't notice anything amiss. The fall was high above Frenzy but didn't alter that.
Tarbuster

climber
right here, right now
Jun 3, 2006 - 01:06am PT
I always wanted to to do the Kor Beck.

Once, while guiding El Capitan, I witnessed quite a large rock fall on middle to the right of free wheelin.

Per Bachar's description of chunks falling off from the iron Hawk:

Marco Milano described to me an experience he had with Werner at the base of El Capitan near the footstool perhaps; large cracking noises accompanied by a growing split in the rock was quickly followed by a massive slab exfoliation.

Do you remember that Werner?
Jaybro

Social climber
The West
Jun 3, 2006 - 01:17am PT
who was the last person to park at the base of the cookie?
Chiloe

Trad climber
Lee, NH
Jun 3, 2006 - 11:31pm PT
Jon Sykes' guidebook to Franconia Notch, New Hampshire (Secrets of the Notch) includes a pair of photos showing the first ascent (Henry Barber) and what turned out to be the last ascent (Jon Sykes) of Whaleback Crack. Not long after the last ascent, the entire route--a huge flake with Henry's offwidth enduro route on one side, and a nice 5.9 jam up the other--fell down.
Mighty Hiker

Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 3, 2006 - 11:50pm PT
I remember another one now. There's a sub-area at Squamish called Murrin Park - about 10 km south. Nice rock, good lake for swimming, lots of moderate climbs, quite a lot of hard climbs.

Anyway, one 25 metre cliff there is called the Sugarloaf. Nice, moderate climbs on its left side, often used for instruction. Steeper climbs on the nose, and right side. One climb used to start in a steep flake/hand crack on the right, then traverse straight left (easy, steep) to a continuation corner on the 'nose'. Robbins visited in 1971 and did a climb that went straight up from the flake. 85 degree face climbing, now graded 5.11b. It was called "Thriller Off the Pillar". It was probably then the hardest route in Canada, and the only time Royal visited us.

One winter in the early 1980s the flake fell out. It was the size of several telephone booths. After that, the climb got renamed "Thriller Off the Void". Maybe half (the easy half) had fallen off, and the starting point had been the top of the flake that fell out.

The flake is still lying in the boulders below, but few believe it when you tell them where it came from.

I was just then starting climbing, and my father and I went to see Royal speak that night. I met Royal at an Access Fund conference in Estes Park in 2001, thirty years later, and told him the story. Plus got him to autograph my much worn original edition of Advanced Rockcraft.

Anders

Edit: Is it possible to highjack one's own thread? Does starting a thread create any intellectual (or anti-intellectual) property rights?
scuffy b

climber
Chalet Neva-Care
Jun 5, 2006 - 01:02pm PT
Hijackers do not exist.
Just a scare tactic from you-know-who.
Maysho

climber
Truckee, CA
Jun 5, 2006 - 01:21pm PT
Ed Barry and I once did a dance with dioritic death on the NJ Turnpike. I tried nailing a big flake (about 8 feet wide by 15 feet tall that was expanding without contracting, got the jeebies and hooked and had to place a rivet to get by (this really bummed me out). We slept below it then, next morning, 5 minutes after Ed cleaned a pin I had left in it, and when he was 10 feet above the top of it, pow! whoossshh!, it sailed off taking an even larger pillar on the lower angled broken black wall below. The resulting rock fall attracted the rangers who bullhorned to confirm our good health. We called it a day and spent the afternoon thinking and talking about the risk vs reward of aid climbing in the black stuff.

Pedro
Dru

climber
HELL, BABY, HELL!
Jun 5, 2006 - 04:08pm PT
Hey Anders, did you ever climb the Medicine Man near Yale, in the Fraser Canyon, before CN Rail blew it up?

Only other one I can think of is Perkins' Pillar. Fred Touche and company bagged the first ascent in 2001, damn thing fell over in 2005. First, last and only ascent.
k-man

Gym climber
SCruz
Jun 5, 2006 - 04:26pm PT
And then there are the routes that got the chop.
Power Fingers in Josh comes to mind. Brass Knuckles in Yos.
I believe CrossRoads was "fixed?"
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Jun 5, 2006 - 05:05pm PT
I've done two routes in SoIll that turned out to be the both the first and last ascents as the person attempting the second took the crux hold off. We also put up an FA in Glenwood canyon that now has the west end of an I-70 tunnel right in the middle of it...

And yeah, Cannon periodically loses some pretty big stuff. Not a place I ever felt comfortable with the idea of doing a lot of nailing that's for damn sure.
Tricouni

Mountain climber
Vancouver
Apr 2, 2010 - 11:37pm PT
Trigger Finger in the Peshastins. Don't know who made the last ascent. Anybody?
John_Box

Ice climber
Bellingham
Apr 2, 2010 - 11:47pm PT
I think Studly said that he climbed it the day before. Something about hanging ten people off of the bolted anchors too.
herm

Trad climber
Bishop
Apr 2, 2010 - 11:54pm PT

I got the FA of Positive Vibrations, when it was still a top rope called Herm's Tower. Made me cry when I heard they pushed it over.
mike m

Trad climber
black hills
Apr 3, 2010 - 12:07am PT
The Last couple of times I climbed Durrance the leaning pillar has been moving. It made me wonder that if it fell and you were clipped to the pins that are conected to the leaning pillar and the pitons did not break would it pull you through your beaner?
Mighty Hiker

climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 3, 2010 - 12:18am PT
Then there was the big rock fall off the west face of the Dru a few years ago. I guess nobody's climbing that much any more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiguille_du_Dru
John_Box

Ice climber
Bellingham
Apr 3, 2010 - 12:21am PT
The Sharp End by Sender Films shows a bit about Micah Dash and Jonny Copp trying for an FA on the Dru, but got stormed off.
Messages 21 - 40 of total 76 in this topic << First  |  < Previous  |  Show All  |  Next >  |  Last >>
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